For those of us lucky to have achieved homeownership in an era of high inflation and insane home values, you most likely had to settle on a starter home or townhouse that comes with a dreaded HOA ( or Homeowners Association). After slaving at that job you hate for a boss not worthy to push paper clips, you deserve to do whatever the hell you want to that new house of yours, right? Well, not if you live in a community governed by a Homeowners Association.
An HOA is like if the Nazis had a Home Goods; they have all sorts of dumb rules written by lifeless sadists meant to make your life miserable. For example, if you ever wanted to put up a 25-foot inflatable Xenomorph to keep up year-round, you’re shit out of luck. One, the HOA board will most likely make sure that the dimensions have to be 25 3/4 feet high and that it be kept up only for Halloween. Two, you will have to make sure the Xenomorph is facing west. This is just an example of the insanely bureaucratic policies that come with an HOA.
Not only will you be forced to live your life according to some arbitrary and stupid rules written by soulless people with no lives of their own, but you’ll have to pay fines for breaking said rules. Now, a $25 fine may not sound like much and certainly nothing to get hot over, but do you really feel you should be forking over your hard-earned money for simply watering your own damn law too much? Well, that’s life living under the tyrannical rule of an HOA.
But fear not, potential homebuyers! We have put together a deliciously evil list of the best HOA revenge stories that may help in your eventual battle with an HOA.
Cover Photo: Hill Street Studios (Getty Images)
HOA Revenge
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6. Man Sues HOA Bigly and Wins
“A good friend of mine inherited his grandparents’ old house. Not even a week after he moved in, he got a visit from a neighborhood committee. They said they are members of the HOA, and are here for him to sign his membership papers. They were extremely nosy and rude, and tried to get into the garage without so much as asking. When my friend stopped him, the man had the audacity to say: ‘I need to check your garage, if everything there is in order. I have a right to do this biweekly, and denying me access is a an offense that will cost a fine.’
My friend had enough of their audacity and kicked them out of the house. One of the board members shoved some papers into his face and told him he needed to sign this right now. Once they were gone, he took a look at the papers. They were ridiculous, and gave the HOA rights that were simply unreal. For example, they had a right to visit your home biweekly. You had to mow your lawn every week, snow had to be shoveled every two hours when it snowed (starting at 5 o’clock in the morning). You could not park more than one car on your grounds (except inside the garage), and a ton of other drama.
A few days later they came back, and asked him why he did not sign the papers yet. They also wanted to check the garage again. This time he would not even let them in, and told them he would never become a member of their stupid club. To them that meant war. Within a week they had sent him fines north of $1,000 (several of which were for denying them access to his home, each worth $250). My friend simply did not take them serious[ly], and used their stupid letters to help fire his grill.
Then came the day when they went extremely too far. One of the board members broke into his garage, stood in it and was writing things down on his notepad. But that was not even the worst part. He had two wonderful oak trees in the front of the house. They had been planted by his great grand parents, when they were newlyweds and moved into the house. The HOA was in the process of taking them down. One was already so damaged it was just a stump that was left. The other one they had just started with. My friend absolutely lost it. He told the tree crew to stop right then and there, and explained to them that he was the owner, and what hey did was highly illegal. They had no idea, since the board member claimed these trees were in violation of the rules.
He told them he would overlook them trespassing, if they would be witnesses in court for him. Then he called the cops on the board members for trespassing, breaking and entering (they actually had used a bolt cutter to get into the garage).
The process must have been glorious. Not only did they have to repay him for the lock and the tree (which was worth a ton of money, north of $50k if I remember right), plus damages for the second tree. But these idiots actually thought the trial would have been unfair, and tried to fight it, which probably cost them an additional $10-15k in lawyers and court costs. All in all this trial must have cost them over $120k. Then he went to yet another civil court and sued them for emotional damage. He told them how much these trees meant to him, since his great grandparents had planted them, with seeds from the home country (he really laid it on as thick as he could). Plus he felt threatened by the HOA, and can hardly sleep, because he always fears they try to get into his house. The court actually bought it, and gave him $500k plus the costs for a state-of-the-art alarm system, so he can feel safe again in his own home.
So put all together he cost the HOA nearly $750k. They had to file for bankruptcy, and get a person to check the books so my friend would get his money. It gets better. The mediator found out that these three pricks had been defrauding the HOA for well over 10 years, and were giving out as many fines as they possibly could so they could use it to bolster their income. All three had to sell their houses, so they could pay out my friend. Now he is, for most people, one of the favorite people living there, and he constantly gets invited over for grilling and whatnot.
You see, most people never wanted the HOA in the first place, but the board member practically forced them to sign the contract, claiming it would not be optional, and if they did not sign before moving it would be a $500 fine. Only six of the over 50 members actually wanted this HOA.”
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5. Man Fights HOA On TV Satellite
“I worked as a team supervisor for DirecTV at this time. Most of my duties were administrative, but if anyone on my team had an escalated call (supervisor requested) then those were my job too.
One of my agents got a call and from what he told me the customer immediately requested a supervisor, that he needed someone with more authority than a front-line service rep (even though my agent could have handled this).
So I take the call and the guy is frantic and asking me for help. He’d been going rounds with his HOA over the placement of his satellite dish. As it turned out, due to various obstructions, the only way his dish could be installed and maintain a quality signal was to be was pole-mounted. So it’s on a pole in his side yard instead of on the roof/side of the house.
The HOA had deemed that a violation and fined him. They then threatened further proceedings against him when he refused to pay. Something about violation of the HOA covenant agreement or some such nonsense like that.
They had shown up this day to further the issue and he decided to call us and see if there was anything we could do. Oh yes, there was.
I asked if I could speak to the HOA rep that was in his home and he was more than pleased to let me handle it. After introducing myself and whatnot, I inform the HOA rep that it is a violation of federal law to deny the homeowner the placement of their dish if that is the only place it could be installed to get a high quality signal.
The HOA rep instantly starts trying to tell me what’s what when I just rattled off ‘Over the Air Reception Devices Rule’ of the Telecommunications Act 1996.
‘What?’
‘The OTARD Rule. It’s a part of the act I just named that explicitly forbids the restriction of placement of a signal reception device if that is the only feasible installation option. In short, you can’t make him remove it and if you force it he has options.’
I couldn’t literally say he can take you to court since I’m not one of the corporate lawyers, but the point was made clear enough.
He just handed the phone back to my customer and left the house. The customer was so freaking excited. ‘You have no idea how much of a hassle this has been, fighting with them over this for months!. The threats of fines, etc. Thank you so much!’
A victory for the little guy.”
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4. Dog Gets Sweet Revenge
“I go into work early some days to get at least some of my work done before the idiots show up. Usually before work I go on about a five-mile walk with my dog. I live in a condo, so I walk about a quarter mile up the road and walk around in a neighborhood.
About eight months ago while I’m walking a golf cart with actual lights and sirens pulls up in front of me. This huge old lady gets out and starts yelling before I can even get my headphones out of my ears. Turns out walking dogs isn’t allowed before 7 a.m. according to the HOA. I informed her that first of all I don’t live there and second of all the streets were all public so she couldn’t really do much. She responded by threatening to call the cops and have me arrested. I just told her to do whatever she felt she had too and walked away.
This made her furious. She started following me in her golf cart with the lights and siren going. This continued for about 10 minutes until the cops arrived on the scene. I stopped and talked with them for a bit and explained my side of things. Took maybe 20 minutes before they came back over to explain what was going to happen.
In the end I had every right to walk my dog at anytime of day or night as long as I had a light when it was dark and had reflective clothing (I had both). As for her, though, they tested the siren, which exceeded noise levels for anytime before 8 a.m. Then to top it off, she didn’t have it registered for use on public roads, and the tail lights didn’t work. As I looped back around, the golf cart was getting loaded onto a tow truck and I just kinda laughed the whole way back to my condo."
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3. Pool Revenge
“My family and I used to live in a fairly upper-middle class neighborhood that had an HOA. The HOA seemed pretty mellow and dedicated to their original purpose and intent: maintaining property values.
As these things usually happen, a few new people got voted in, things started getting a bit more OCD and militant. Here are a few examples:
We had to throw away our basketball hoop because the backboard was opaque and the new requirement was glass backboards only.
We got a ticket because my dad forgot Monday was Memorial Day and put the trash out. Of course, trash collection had been pushed back to Tuesday, so we got a fine for having the trash can out overnight.
We went on vacation for a week and the grass got a bit longer than usual, but nothing unreasonable. Got threatening letters and a fine.
We weren’t allowed to have cars parked on the street, for any reason.
My biggest pet peeve was that anyone under 18 had to be accompanied to the pool by their parent. I wasn’t too fond of having to get my mom to come bake in the sun any time I wanted to go for a swim. Nor was she.
I was on a Navy JROTC field trip to a Naval base and stumbled upon what I still regard to be one of my greatest ideas. I was in the Navy Exchange (basically Walmart for Navy personnel) looking at some of their surplus stuff when I came across an ejection seat dye marker. These are those very powerful dye markers that are attached to ejection seats so that in the event of a water landing after ejection, the pilot can be found easily, floating in the middle of a huge patch of green-dyed water.
So I bought it for $8 (a bargain at any price) and took it home. One night, after the HOA instituted (unenforceable) 10 p.m. curfew for adolescents under 18, I took a little stroll over to the pool and tossed that bad boy on in. Much to my delight (and nervous horror) it worked exactly as designed. The whole pool was neon green in a matter of a minute or two. Of course, I got out of dodge.
The next day, as I drove past on my way home from school, I noticed that the pool was empty, but still looked super green. In the ensuing weeks, I came to find out that the pool had to be drained (660,000 gallons of water) and a professional power-washing company had to be brought in to clean the pool basin concrete, which had absorbed the die. Then the pool had to be refilled and re-treated with all the relevant chemicals. All told, I think it cost the HOA $10,000.
Two years later, the HOA president was busted by the IRS and arrested for embezzling $70k worth of HOA funds. He went to the big house for a couple of years.
And before anyone tears into me for wasting water, this was in the south, not California. We have more water than we want down here.”
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2. No Playhouse For You!
“My parents built a playhouse for my younger siblings and our local HOA claimed it was a storage shed and that it was on our neighbor’s property.
My dad knew it wasn’t because he had worked with the neighbor (Let’s call him Rick) to make sure it wasn’t on his property.
Long story short, my dad and Rick went to a HOA meeting. They pulled [out] all the stops for this, taking measurements and pictures, outlining the yards from aerial photos, they even got a surveyor to take a look. The HOA’s response was this:
‘It looks like a shed, so it needs to go away.’ My dad was extremely angry and nearly cussed out the board members.
So he went home and hatched a plan.
He convinced all the people on our block to build playhouses, or ‘sheds.’ Most people did. The HOA went freaking crazy. But they lost because the block showed pictures of the ‘sheds’ and also managed to vote off some of the members a little while later.”
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1. Dog Poop Revenge
“We live in a condo and began receiving $100 fines for not picking up dog poop. The area behind our building is a common area and lots of people walk their dogs around. I offered to submit DNA testing for my dogs, and they ignored me and continued to send notices of fines.
I began taking my phone with me on every walk and took photos and videos of me picking up poop with timestamp evidence. I sent a folder full of photos to the HOA with photographic evidence that I was picking up after my dogs.
We continued to receive fines. I got a small trash can and kept on my patio and began saving my bags of dog poop for two weeks. I did tie the bags, but they were still obviously smelly as poop bags are very thin plastic. I then mailed a box of poop to the HOA office along with copies of timestamped photos showing I had picked it up. I told them that I had better not ever receive another fine for dog poop because I had provided more than sufficient evidence that it wasn’t us. Miraculously, the fines stopped, and we haven’t received any for over two years.”
